Tag Archives: Maverick

Sarah Palin’s Secret Diary is currently being sold on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com for $9.99 (.99 cents more then Sarah Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue: An American Life“), this tongue in cheek ‘tome’ is described as a “genuine imitation of Sarah Palin’s diary, fabricated by a bona fide satirist, reveals spurious behind-the-scenes happenings with all your favorite mavericks from the extended Palin family—Todd, Bristol, Piper, Willow, Trig, Levi Johnston, John McCain, and Joe the Plumber. They’re all here and more! Inside you’ll find the ersatz adventures of America’s favorite hockey mom, including such fallacious details as . . . How Bristol revealed her little secret. Going rogue with Joe the Plumber. Books the former Governor would love to ban. How to speak Maverick. Why John McCain chose to run with Miss Wasilla. Waterboarding Tina Fey. What happened to all those ritzy clothes. The concession speech she never gave. Campaign slogans for 2012. Will this laugh-out-loud lampoon of Sarah Palin’s intimate story give you an enlightening peek inside the most astonishing mind in American politics? You betcha”

The author, Joey Green, is a former contributing editor to the National Lampoon, and the author of many books, including Selling Out, The Zen of Oz, Monica Speaks, You Know You’ve Reached Middle Age If…, The Jolly President (or Letters George Bush Never Read), and Famous Failures. Green has appeared on Good Morning America, The View, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and has been profiled in the New York Times and People.

By popular demand, I am reposting this story about Mayor Sarah Palin eliminating building permits before her personal home AND the Wasilla Sports Complex were constructed in Wasilla, Alaska. The post originally appeared on the Sarah Palin Truth Squad back in October 14, 2008.

Although this is old news, it’s good to remember the personal ethics of Sarah Palin as she moves forward into her latest career.

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Sarah Palin winking to the cameras.

Wayne Barrett, investigative journalist and senior editor for the Village Voice, published a brilliantly illuminating exposé on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the building of her new Wasilla family home by the same contractors awarded the contract to build the new, multi-million dollar Wasilla sports complex. Also, throughout Sarah Palin’s political career, she has worked closely with lobbyists, promoting the interests of big business and oil corporations. Barrett was interviewed by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown as to the possible conflicts of interest these connections might have posed for Gov. Palin.

Along with the winks and folksy “doggone” moments early in her debate with Joe Biden last week, Sarah Palin repeated her familiar claim to the title of “maverick,” declaring that “as a governor and as a mayor,” she’s had a “track record of reform” and has now “joined a team of mavericks.”

Despite the free fall that her polling numbers went into after her disastrous interviews with Katie Couric, that branding as a “reformer” has been resilient. Introduced skillfully before tens of millions during an intense surge of interest six weeks ago, it’s been hammered home with repeated soundbites.

But the label doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. From the controversy that catapulted her to the governorship, to her ties to the indicted patriarch of Alaska’s GOP, to the multilayered nexus of lobbyists and Big Oil interests around her, and, finally, to the Wasilla sports complex that capped her mayoral career, the myth of Sarah Palin, reformer, withers under inspection.

Wasilla, Alaska Sports Complex

PALIN’S CLAIM to fame as an Alaska reformer-that she risked her career to expose the chairman of the state GOP-is revisionist. In fact, Palin supported the methane-drilling project that helped sink GOP boss Randy Ruedrich before she later decided she was against it-a mirror of her flip-flop on the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. And her reversal had more to do with seizing a political opportunity than following her conscience.

On Monday, Eric Boehlert highlightedTime‘s upcoming cover story on Sarah Palin, titled, “The Outsider: Where is Sarah Palin Going Next?” While Palin has certainly received her share of bad press, a great deal of it has been the inevitable result of her own statements and actions. Interpretive articles like this one, however, are different and provide journalists with the chance to use their judgment to put past actions and ongoing trials in a broader context that will help readers better understand the subject at hand.

Which is why this article is so problematic. In it, Time‘s David Von Drehle and Jay Newton-Small go to immense lengths to create a story out of thin air. In this case, it’s “The Renegade,” a tale about an unconventional politician making waves with her unpredictable behavior. The piece is deeply flawed, advancing conservative narratives without challenge and ignoring obvious realities about Palin, her home state, and the problems she faces. It’s an account that flies in the face not just of progressive criticisms of the governor, but of a growing chorus of conservative ones as well.

And it is exactly the kind of ratings-driven journalism that is, ironically, making magazines like Time less and less authoritative at a time when serious journalism couldn’t be more needed.

Gov. Sarah Palin, back from the campaign trail, faces a changed landscape in Alaska.

It appears that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will probably be back on the national scene in two years campaigning as the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election. We here at the Sarah Palin Truth Squad have decided to continue posting information about Governor Palin in anticipation of that race. Today the Anchorage Daily News published the following article by Tom Kizzia on the political future of Gov. Palin.

For two months she basked — and sizzled — in the world’s hottest celebrity spotlight. Now Sarah Palin has come home to begin the last two years of her term as governor of Alaska.

Everything has changed: Palin’s personal horizon, her relations with the state’s other elected officials, the public’s sense of who she is.

Palin returned to her office Friday amid a brutal crossfire between detractors and defenders in the McCain camp. At the same time, however, a new national poll said 64 percent of Republicans consider her their top choice to run for president in 2012.

Well, it’s been a little over 24 hours and already the possiblity of Governor Sarah Palin jockeying for Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ Senate seat is being seriously considered. The Alaska Dispatch published an article today exploring Gov. Palin’s next power grab in her zealous quest for what she sees as the ultimate prize, the United States presidency.

Governor Sarah Palin just issued an updated statement on Sen. Ted Stevens’ guilty verdict, saying “the time has come for him to step aside.” But what stands out most is the next sentence in her statement. “Even if elected on Tuesday,” Palin says, “Senator Stevens should step aside to allow a special election to give Alaskans a real choice of who will serve them in Congress.”

Should Stevens emerge the winner next Tuesday and then resign, guess who might get to appoint his temporary replacement?

Governor Palin.

Alaskans are already tired of the corruption, the Palin circus, the national media, Troopergate, and the overall embarrassment their leaders have brought to the state. Stevens winning the election, resigning, and giving Palin the opportunity to appoint his replacement may just well push sourdoughs over the edge.

CNNPolitics.com reports that aides for John McCain are frustrated by their ‘maverick’ vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin going all “rogue” on the Republican campaign and ignoring strategy recommendations. Past interviews with Governor Sarah Palin’s colleagues in Alaska have confirmed this is her style … that Gov. Palin is only out for ‘team’ Sarah while steamrolling over anyone who stands in her way. One McCain adviser said “she is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone … She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.”

Although John McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt are reportedly targets of Gov. Palin’s frustration at the decision to prevent media access to her early in the campaign, sources indicate Palin just was not ready and if reporters had interviewed her sooner the results would have been much worse. Really?? Worse than the interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric??

A close McCain adviser admitted that Palin’s “lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic” and that is was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.” These revalations from the Republicans should be very alarming to the American voters.

Associate editor/poetry editor of the Wasatch Journal magazine Melissa Bond wrote a poignant op-ed on motherhood with a beautiful special needs baby while sharing her concerns on the readiness of Governor Sarah Palin for the vice presidency of the United States.

As the mother of a four-month-old boy with Down syndrome, I can relate to Sarah Palin. I mean, really, when she held Trig up after her speech at the Republican National Committee last month, offering him to the television cameras like a piece of prime elk and saying that she understood and that she’d be my boy’s advocate in the White House, I wanted to melt. Look at that kid in his striped jammies, I thought. I wanted to believe her. And honestly, I think that she’d do her best to wave that special-needs flag. I can see her jogging giddily through the White House halls, can even imagine a cheer or two complete with high-kicks, while she and President John McCain jump on the couches in the Oval Office. Go, Trig, go!

The problem isn’t that I think Palin is insincere. It isn’t that I have questions about who’s caring for Trig and giving him the extensive therapy that’s recommended for Down syndrome kids while she’s out playing Gidget Goes to the White House. It isn’t even that this wolf -killing, Miss Alaska runner-up confuses her facts about Obama andherown running mate-Obama has authored several major ethics reforms and McCain is notthe prince of regulation. It’s simply that I have a serious question about the governor’s math skills. With the current eye-popping national deficit of more than $9 trillion, with a systemic financial crisis that’s costing taxpayers more than $700 billion (and that’s just for starters), and with a foreign policy that keeps notching its belt with unsupported wars, where does Palin think the money will come from? Medicaid is being pummeled. Social services of all kinds are being pummeled. Rome is burning, and while the Republicans have hedged their bets that this country will eat the American pie narrative about the average-Alaska-supermom-who-makes-it-big, I’m not buying it.

Despite her home-cooked persona, Palin just doesn’t have a good head for numbers. That jet that she claims she sold on eBay? Oops! Good story, but it was sold to an airline broker at nearly a $600,000 loss to taxpayers. And that $15 million hockey arena that was her signature accomplishment as Wasilla’s mayor? Oops again! She broke ground without finalizing the city’s purchase of the land. Taxpayers had to suck up an additional $1.3 million dollars to pay for the fiasco. Bummer. Sorry, guys. And that’s just as mayor of a small town. The thought of Palin as vice prez, drooling over every earmark like a pit bull in the ring, simply terrifies. And even if Palin is a quick study, I just don’t feel great about letting her learn on the job.

I haven’t even mentioned anything about foreign policy. But then again, neither has Palin. Except for Russia, of course. She and Vladimir Putin must blow kisses from across the divide. They’re that close.

Even if Palin boned up on her math skills, there still would be the problem with her rhetorical strategies. She’s almost winning in her repetitive enthusiasm for untruths, but the facts of Troopergate (Alaska’s bipartisan investigative committee on the issue gave her a big thumbs- down for ethics violations) and her terrorist accusations (Obama may be black, but honey, he’s no Arab) will not go away. She’s like the little engine that could, painted lips smiling at the cameras and saying maverick, maverick, maverick while members of the press fold up their note pads and grow tired of asking her to answer straight-up for once. Please. We of the Joe Six-Pack variety can’t follow her barrage of words. We just need her to speak clearly for once, and, for heavens sake, stop long enough on the way to the next campaign stop to answer the questions.

If McCain and Palin actually beat the growing odds against them and make it to the White House, I’ve no doubt Palin will continue to espouse her hockey-mom ministries. And Trig will be the face that will eclipse all doubt. He will draw us to her like maternal moths to the flame. We’ll forget that while she talks tough on the campaign trail about takin’ on the big oil companies, she took nearly half of her contributions while running for governor of Alaska in 2006 from oil and gas company lobbyists ($13,000 of the more than $24,000 from registered lobbyists, according to campaign records). We’ll forget about that stuffy ol’ notion that separates church from state, and we’ll have prayer groups dictate policy.

We’ll put the knowledge that she’s-so-in-over-her-head-it’s-scary away somewhere, and focus on the fact that she wants to keep our gasping consumer paradise alive at any cost. Drill, drill, drill. And, as for my boy? I’m sure she’ll keep him in mind. Maybe she’ll send him a card. Or, save the stamp-they’re getting expensive!- and send an e-mail.